Kickstarter has certainly brought a lot of change to the tabletop gaming market. For smaller publishers it became the way to promote their ideas and for bigger ones: it's a new platform to sell their games. Crowdfunding seems to remain quite huge, and last year we’ve witnessed funding records getting broken once again.

As 2020 is behind us, we’d like to show you our favourite games that debuted on Kickstarter last year. 

Frosthaven

Let’s start with the biggest campaign of 2020 and... the biggest board game campaign ever. A successor to fantastic Gloomhaven took Kickstarter by storm. The game is fully stand alone and doesn’t require knowledge of the previous installments. If you have them though, it’s possible to use some components (like the characters) in this new campaign.

Frosthaven's story takes us to the northern part of the world created by Isaac Childres. A single outpost becomes a target of incoming invaders and the only people able to force them out are the few adventurers similar to you. To complete the entire campaign you will have to finish numerous missions, and make decisions between them which will lead to different scenarios and alternative outcomes. 

The game switches focus from coins known from Gloomhaven into loot, which is helpful in battle as well as outside it. There’s also a small city building element, which you work on between scenarios. Seasons of the year were also introduced here along with puzzles that have their own special book and can reward you with more lore and other prizes.

The game seems to be as massive as its predecessor, so having a proper gaming furniture to save your games and make longer sessions possible will certainly be a huge help!

Perseverance: Castaway Chronicles

A 4 part long euro game series by Mindclash Games had its first 2 episodes launched last year. While the game is designed, so you can play the episodes in order, actually each of them works on its own and makes a proper stand alone game. 

The story tells us about an ocean liner that got lost during a storm and ended up on a mysterious island. The more you explore these uncharted lands the more you realize that they’re not uninhibited. In fact they’re populated by… dinosaurs. Castaways that ended up there make an attempt at starting their own settlement there and fighting the beasts off. And who knows, maybe one day they’ll learn to domesticate them at some point.

Both games are partially co-op, work for up to 4 players and share some gameplay elements (dice drafting), but not enough to make them feel too similar. Add some great looking art and components to the above and we might have a hit here.

Chronicles of Crime: The Millennium Series

Here’s another case similar to Frosthaven: a stand alone sequel game, although here: stories have nothing to do with the original Chronicles of Crime. The designers at Lucky Duck Games take us to 3 different journeys across time set in the middle ages, the 1900s and in the far future. Each of these has you and your team solve puzzles and discover truth about various crimes.

Chronicles of Crime: The Millennium Series uses the same QR code mechanics we’ve seen in the original game. To play, all you need is a provided deck of cards, the board and a mobile app that can be downloaded from App Store and Google Play. Thanks to it, you’ll be able to scan cards, read dialogues, make choices and analyze murder scenes in 3D (with an optional support for special googles).

Additionally every game has some new component that sets it apart from the rest of the series. In the case of 1400 it’s the Vision Cards, the industrial era has Puzzle Cards and the cyberpunk one: Implant Cards. Each of these becomes a huge help when looking for correct answers, while making the gameplay more unique.

Cartographers: Heroes

This was a no brainer as the original Cartographers was one of the games that helped us survive 2020 without going crazy. For those of you who haven't played it: each player becomes a cartographer tasked with creating a map of a certain fantasy kingdom. Everyone gets a piece of paper and draws shapes that appear on cards that everyone shares. They all belong to a certain type of terrain from forest and sea to cities. Points are granted for fulfilling certain goals. This means for example creating cities as big as possible or connecting mountains with forests.

The new versions of Cartographers offer additional maps (100 pieces of each). We have a volcano map, an undercity map and one with separate islands. Each set comes with cards that add new elements to the gameplay (like volcanoes and brand new goal cards). All of that should make the base game even more replayable than before.